Within this master's thesis I examine the permanent museum exhibition as the most distinctive form of museum communication with museum visitors. As such, it takes up a crucial yet often overlooked role in the communication and representation of the museum institution and its broader museum collection. Within this thesis, I consider the permanent exhibition not only as a spatial arrangement of museum objects, but also as a complex communicative and interpretative medium. This raises important questions about how its communicative role is shaped and implemented in museum practice. Within the thesis I provide an overview of fundamental and established museological theoretical frameworks, with particular emphasis on the definition of museology as a discipline whose primary object of research is museality, and on understanding the museum object as a principal source of information and the focal point of any museum exhibition. I further include an analysis of various exhibition strategies and communication approaches implemented by museums when creating permanent exhibitions. Special emphasis is given to the importance of the distinction between seeing and observing exhibited museum objects, and the visitor’s interaction with them. As the core question of the master’s thesis, I address the professional responsibility involved in designing permanent exhibitions and consider how we, as exhibition designers, can ensure that the visitor experiences the museum and its permanent exhibition as a comprehensive, visually and intellectually stimulating medium. Furthermore, I emphasise the need for closer collaboration between museological theory and museum practice, along with an ongoing and systematic evaluation of museum work. This enables the reciprocal development and advancement of both professional fields and contributes to the improvement of the overall visitor experience of the permanent museum exhibition and the museum as a whole.
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